Ready-made bread products and cookie doughs already exist on the market. Typically, cookie doughs are refrigerated and packaged either in a cylindrical shape or packaged in a cup. During use, the consumer uses a spoon or a knife to form the cookie in a circular shape prior to baking. This particular cookie dough preparation requires extensive manipulation of the cookie dough prior to use. If the cookie dough is packaged in the form of a block or sheet, then a forming device is needed in order to give the cookie the desired circular form. This cookie dough manipulation, however, leaves remnants of cookie dough pieces, which must then be recycled and reshaped if desired.
Another conventional product is a frozen cookie dough which is in the form of individual amounts to form single cookies. The amounts are provided by forming dough balls or by cutting the dough into individual pieces. The balls or pieces are then placed adjacent each other on a tray or other support, and are then frozen. The dough pieces, being tacky before freezing, stick to adjacent pieces and freeze into a solid block. During use, the consumer thaws the block and then separates the individual pieces for baking. As the preparation before freezing is somewhat complex, an improvement on these type products is also needed.
Bread products like pizza crusts are typically formed in one of several ways. One common type of pizza crust product is as a fully formed and frozen pizza crust with toppings disposed thereon. Another conventional pizza crust product is in the form of individual or multiply-packaged pizza crusts that are vacuum packed and stored at room temperature (e.g., Boboli™ shells), again with parmesan or other cheeses disposed thereon. Yet another conventional pizza crust product is available as powder packages of flour and other dry ingredients to which yeast and/or hot water are added by the consumer. Muffins are often found either in fully cooked and ready-to-eat form or in boxes or bags of flour and other dry ingredients, to which oil, water, eggs, or the like must be added by the end-user before cooking. Some rolls and biscuits are available in a form like the cookie dough described above, with sticky pieces that must be pulled apart after removal from a cylindrical pack. For example, crescent-shaped rolls are available in a cylindrical pack as dough triangles with perforations between the dough to be pulled apart, however, these must then be formed into the necessary shape, and the dough tends to be soft for further shape manipulation and thus tends to tear. Such conventional products typically often do not include toppings, fillings, or the like, but these need to be added during preparation by the end user. Many other conventional bread products are available in their individual, pre-cooked form, such as bagels, crackers, or in a form that is ready-to-cook such as pie crust pre-formed into a pie tin.